Was this per chance sent to the Amex? On a normal day they rip you off yesterday I cant even imagine. Set Inet as default for Amex stocks.
very good to know guys, thanks for the excellent details jim are there any instances where 100 share quotes on the NYSE or AMEX are firm? i don't think i've ever gotten the shares when 100 are bid or offered. maybe once or twice after calling it in mrmoose in this particular case the stock doesn't trade on amex, but definitely same deal for me on the amex and particularly at inopportune times like a busy day or into the close
Yes, in general, all such quotes are "firm". This means that if the quote is displayed, and is hit by an incoming order, then the displayed quote must be honored, up to the size displayed for that quote. Exceptions to this rule apply only under special market conditions established via certain procedures. Try googling the SEC's "Firm Quote Rule" in order to learn more. The problem with 100 share NYSE/AMEX quotes is not that they are not firm. The problem is that they are generally stale, because the 100 shares went to somebody else's order who got to the exchange first. IB documentation and employees generally refer to 100 shares quotes as not "firm" quotes. This is simply an incorrect use of terminology, which causes a lot of confusion and interferes with efforts to debug order routing issues. Quotes for U.S. equities are, by law (the SEC's Firm Quote Rule), always firm, up to the quoted size, except under special market conditions. A 100 share quote on an ECN is not only firm, it is also free from the problems associated with 100 share quotes from NYSE/AMEX.
Fact is, that AMEX used to be a lot worse when they used carrier pigeon to enter quotes (talking about a few years ago) Now they at lease update fast.
i see the semantic issue with the word firm. the fact is, the 100 share NYSE quotes advertised on my screen portray themselves as legitimate bids and offers at which i can trade, but they're not it's a shameless and devious way to run a business, but they do it. they're only a few blocks away from the 3 card monte guys on canal, prolly same dudes at lunch hour
fwiw... TWS with 5.0.10 java Qoutetracker with IQ Feed Rock solid stable with zero data/trade issues last two days with option trader (from tws) open allday and 7 tabs in TWS (using old fashioned 2.2GHz Athlon, 1 GHz ddr and 32 bit xp)
In my experience yesterday at the time of the major selloff, TWS last version (rock solid), QT with TWS (also doing well), Tradestation (sucks!, the amount of data freezes this application, I had to close it and soon to open it at such wild time).
Probably any real charting program will have had problems unless it was one of those which costs on the thousands per month. However, even if TS charts freeze, their matrix will probably work as well as IBs. This was my experience anyways. I trade on IB on a separate computer but use Esignal for charts these days. Esignal is always behind IB's booktrader. IB's quotes are also a little behind but my limit and stop orders were executed without slippage on eminis. IB is very, very solid.
I was surprised by the performance of the markets on a macro level. You seemed to have a lot of problems on the equity side (e.g. - NYSE, DOW) but no problems on the options side, which is interesting. You'd think that, with those exchanges posting record volume days, that there would have been a few hiccups.